Yesterday, I had a post about President Obama and the racist marauding at the Wisconsin State Fair. I wondered whether the president might make a comment or two. “Isn’t this what he’s supposed to be good at? Messages that heal and correct and bring together? Wasn’t that supposed to be one of the great perks of electing this inexperienced ideologue president?”
Needless to say, a president can’t keep an eye on every sparrow — there’s a lot of work to do, and the U.S. is a big, messy country. But a reader pointed out that Obama was happy to jump into the fray after Prof. Henry Louis Gates was arrested. Obama was all over that — and the Cambridge, Mass., police. This led to the famous “beer summit,” as you recall.
What happened at the Wisconsin State Fair is at least as important as what happened between Gates and that cop. At least as significant, at least as pressing. Yet our president is reticent. (By the way, when did that word come to mean “reluctant”? Was there some vote, a few years ago?) If Obama has made a statement about Wisconsin, forgive me — I haven’t noticed it.
I will repeat my rhetoric from yesterday, so enamored of it am I: Wasn’t this what Obama was supposed to be good at? What else was he supposed to contribute as president? Did people expect him to curtail government spending, reform entitlement programs, fuel entrepreneurship, project American strength abroad, advance liberal democracy?
Obama couldn’t make abortion more legal than it was. We’ve had absolute abortion-on-demand for decades now. What more do you want, a two-year waiting period, to see whether you actually like the kid?
It’s hard to think of ways Barack Obama has made the country or world better. At least for me. He brought about national health care, or something like it. Democrats think that’s an historic achievement. I think it’s an historic achievement too (or “a historic” achievement, take your pick). But not in a positive way.
Okay, I’m done, in what may be the most right-wing post I have ever written (since maybe June).
P.S. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Obama give a big race-relations speech, at the end of the summer. I suspect — hope — it’ll be good, too.